Zelboraf May Double Survival for Some Melanoma Patients

Feb. 22, 2012 -- The newly approved drug Zelboraf appears to nearly double the length of time a person can expect to live with advanced melanomaskin cancer, a new study shows.

Melanoma kills about 9,000 Americans each year, and it often progresses quickly. Studies have found that the midpoint in survival time for patients on standard chemotherapy is just six to 10 months for patients with melanoma that has spread to other organs.

Last year, the FDA fast-tracked approval for Zelboraf, a pill that targets a specific mutation in the BRAF gene that’s present in about half of all melanomas.

At the time it was approved, studies showed the drug was shrinking tumors in most patients who took it, but researchers had not been following patients long enough to know how it might affect long-term survival.

The new study, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed a group of 132 patients taking Zelboraf for an average of 13 months.

Drug May Buy Patients More Time

More than half of the patients in the study saw their tumors shrink by at least 30%. In another 33% of patients, the drug slowed or stopped the progression of their disease. Only 14% of patients didn’t appear to see any benefit from the drug.

As dramatic as the responses to Zelboraf can be, they may not last. By seven months, half the patients in the study had stopped responding to the medication.

But even a temporary response appears to extend survival. Half the patients in the study were still alive after 16 months.

“There’s a feeling that patients respond for a very short time and then relapse. Obviously that’s true, there are patients like that. But there is a group of patients who respond for much longer periods of time, and a number of patients are still alive at a year or two years. And I think we didn’t appreciate those numbers before,” says researcher Jeffrey A. Sosman, MD, director of the melanoma and tumor immunotherapy program at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn.